M.2 NVMe 4x PCI 3.0 4 GB/s SSD interface - is it here to stay?

[Deders]

Can you have 3 M.2 drives? Oh really? That's interesting.

It would be possible with 2x on board ports and an add in card with an extra port. Although the PCIe lanes they would take up might not be as desirable.

 

[Redstorm]

I don't like M.2 drives and will probably not buy one, regardless of cost. The performance of course I like, but I don't like sacrificing PCI-E bandwidth for a hard drive and it seems you can only have one of these drives plugged into your motherboard. I'd like to see yet another SATA or something similar.
I like hard drives that connect with cables. I can route them where I want and mount them where I want. I want to connect more than 1 hard drive to my computer. I have 3 SSD's. Can you have 3 M.2 drives? Oh really? That's interesting.

Yes you can have 3 x M.2 drives today with full bandwidth to each. Why would you not put your SSD's on the fastest bus available rather than bottle necking a slower interface further disconnected from the CPU? makes no sense to me from a performance perspective.

 

[xenolith]

Are Z170, Z97, and X99 the only chipsets that currently have native support for M.2 NVMe 4x PCI 3.0?

 

[Redstorm]

Are Z170, Z97, and X99 the only chipsets that currently have native support for M.2 NVMe 4x PCI 3.0?

Officially yes. You can mod an older bios from P67 up to include nvme support though, but its not for the faint of heart.

 

[=Wendy=]

Only the Z170 and X99 chipsets natively support M.2 @ PCIe3 x4.
Some Z97 boards support M.2 PCIe3 X4, but this is not from the Z97 chipset, it uses 4x PCIe3 lanes from the CPU.
Native Z97 M.2 support is only x2 PCIe2, with a max bandwidth of 1GB/s.

 

[Fernando 1]

You can mode an older bios from P67 up to include nvme support though, but its not for the faint of heart.

It is easier than you may think (>here< is my guide about how to do it).
This is what I got with my Intel Z68 system running Win10 x64 on a 400 GB Intel 750 NVMe SSD :

 

[Fjodor2001]

Are Z170, Z97, and X99 the only chipsets that currently have native support for M.2 NVMe 4x PCI 3.0?

H170 seems to support is as well:

https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/H170M-PLUS/specifications/

Intel® H170 chipset :
1 x M.2 Socket 3, , with M key, type 2242/2260/2280 storage devices support (both SATA & PCIE mode)

https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/H170M-PLUS/

Lightning-fast M.2 with PCIe® 3.0 x4 interface

 

[Burner27]

There are adapters that plug into M.2 slots to convert them to use U.2 drives, but is there anything that will convert/enable a U.2 drive to use an M.2 drive (I.E.: Samsung 951)?

I want to build a machine based on the Z170 chipset (Asus Maximus VIII Impact) but it only has a U.2 slot.

 

[Cerb]

You might have to get a M.2 card, in that case.